With stolen power it's Der Fuerher Bush against Czar Putin! We're in trouble, with the buildup to WW3 I think if we have elections Obama will be the one to save us!
We never hear anything period about Bush using 9/11 and so called terrorists for stealing as much power as possible to control us as he prepares to purposely get us in a US destroying war with Iran and ultimately the majority of the world. On the MSN all we here is news that is favorable to Bush and news that enables him top continue his power grab ultimately to be used to contain us as he fights his wars.
Instead our news stations are focused on highlighting how Putin has hijacked Russia. How Putin has neutralized all opposition and has been stacking the deck to keep his hands in power. That he has been passing laws to enable him to take total control of Russia and its people. They do not mind! They are happy Russia is moving away from Democracy. It was a disaster for them. They again have food in the stores.
Putin is Russia's Czar, he has to be to take on Der Fuerher! As American troops give their lives in Iraq to spread democracy around the world, the people of Russia are facing a stark reversal of their democratic rights. It's a retreat from democracy that comes just 15 years after Boris Yelstin's standoff with the Soviet Union from a tank turret in Moscow that marks the collapse of Communism in Russia. In a nation conditioned by centuries of czarist rule and decades of Communist control, Russians seem satisfied with the pace of democratic progress:
Western observers say that the tide of freedom turned in 1999 when Boris Yeltsin handed the presidency to Putin, his handpicked successor and a former agent with the Soviet Secret Police. Joel Rosenberg is a political analyst and author of the book Epicenter, from the moment Vladimir Putin rose to power, he says, he began building up the military and alliances with anti-Western, authoritarian regimes. The ex-kgb colonel, Rosenberg says, has become the "anti-Democrat- in-chief." He has to be! Democracy failed Russia and I have to say it is Reagan and Bush's fault. Putin is being forced to go back to their old ways in order to compete with the warmongering chief idiot who is fueling this entire developing world crisis!
I know Putin is preparing to take us on and that can be our only motivation in criticizing Putin for doing the right thing! He is only doing the same thing the chief idiot is doing to us. "Freedom is getting in Putin's way. Putin wants to be the new czar of Russia,” said Rosenberg. “He is not interested in a democracy. He is rolling back freedoms. [His goal is] to be a czar and to rebuild the Russian empire." Raised in St. Petersburg, the home of Peter the Great and the Russian czars, Putin has stated that Russia should be a free and democratic society, but one based on Russian traditions, "not Western ideals." As president, Putin restored some traditions of the past Soviet tyranny, reviving the Communist flag as a military symbol. He also restored the Soviet national anthem.
I don't get it! There is great concern with Putin gaining total control over Russia and her people while they are okay with it as everything is coming up roses for them. It does though get in Bush's way as he continues to secretly pass laws to control us as he prepares to Battle Iran Putin and everyone else that wants to stop his warmongering. Please read this it is eye opening
Instead our news stations are focused on highlighting how Putin has hijacked Russia. How Putin has neutralized all opposition and has been stacking the deck to keep his hands in power. That he has been passing laws to enable him to take total control of Russia and its people. They do not mind! They are happy Russia is moving away from Democracy. It was a disaster for them. They again have food in the stores.
Putin is Russia's Czar, he has to be to take on Der Fuerher! As American troops give their lives in Iraq to spread democracy around the world, the people of Russia are facing a stark reversal of their democratic rights. It's a retreat from democracy that comes just 15 years after Boris Yelstin's standoff with the Soviet Union from a tank turret in Moscow that marks the collapse of Communism in Russia. In a nation conditioned by centuries of czarist rule and decades of Communist control, Russians seem satisfied with the pace of democratic progress:
Western observers say that the tide of freedom turned in 1999 when Boris Yeltsin handed the presidency to Putin, his handpicked successor and a former agent with the Soviet Secret Police. Joel Rosenberg is a political analyst and author of the book Epicenter, from the moment Vladimir Putin rose to power, he says, he began building up the military and alliances with anti-Western, authoritarian regimes. The ex-kgb colonel, Rosenberg says, has become the "anti-Democrat- in-chief." He has to be! Democracy failed Russia and I have to say it is Reagan and Bush's fault. Putin is being forced to go back to their old ways in order to compete with the warmongering chief idiot who is fueling this entire developing world crisis!
I know Putin is preparing to take us on and that can be our only motivation in criticizing Putin for doing the right thing! He is only doing the same thing the chief idiot is doing to us. "Freedom is getting in Putin's way. Putin wants to be the new czar of Russia,” said Rosenberg. “He is not interested in a democracy. He is rolling back freedoms. [His goal is] to be a czar and to rebuild the Russian empire." Raised in St. Petersburg, the home of Peter the Great and the Russian czars, Putin has stated that Russia should be a free and democratic society, but one based on Russian traditions, "not Western ideals." As president, Putin restored some traditions of the past Soviet tyranny, reviving the Communist flag as a military symbol. He also restored the Soviet national anthem.
I don't get it! There is great concern with Putin gaining total control over Russia and her people while they are okay with it as everything is coming up roses for them. It does though get in Bush's way as he continues to secretly pass laws to control us as he prepares to Battle Iran Putin and everyone else that wants to stop his warmongering. Please read this it is eye opening
I want to focus on Bush's power grab to control us as he seeks a way to embroil us in his forever war he knows we will come out against and who might be able to stop this if we have elections in 2008!
Look at this! This is a flagrant violation of the concept of "Separation of Powers" as embodied in the Constitution. In the event that this "shadow government" seizes power, it will function as a dictatorship exercising military and police powers, without any legislative oversight or judicial control. Public Law 101-647, signed by daddy Bush in November 1990, allows boy George to declare a national emergency for almost any reason.
If America suffers a major earthquake, an economic crisis, or a terrorist attack, FEMA is empowered to implement Executive Orders 10995 through 11005. The power to issue Executive Orders allows the President of the United States to unilaterally create law without congressional oversight and approval. Col. James Ammerman, 40 years an Army Chaplain, gave a talk at The Granada Forum in southern California on March 20, 1997. He outlined the details of Executive Orders 10995 through 11005 as follows:
Executive Order #10995: Authorizes seizure of all communication equipment in the United States.
Executive Order #10997: Authorizes seizure of all electric power companies, fuels, fuel sources, and minerals (public and private)
Executive Order #10998: Authorizes seizure of all food supplies, food resources, all farms and all farm lands (public and private).
Executive Order #10999: Authorizes seizure of all means of transportation- including personal cars, trucks, or any type of vehicle; Total control over all highways, roads, seaports, and sea ways.
Executive Order #11000: Authorizes forced conscription of all Americans for work duties under supervision of Federal agents. This section also authorizes the splitting up of family units if deemed necessary by the government agencies in charge.
Executive Order #11001: Authorizes seizure of all health, education, and welfare facilities and their administrations (public and private).
Executive Order #11002: Empowers the Post Master General to register all men, women, and children in the United States for government purposes.
Executive Order #11003: Authorizes seizure of all airports and all aircraft, public, commercial, and private.
Executive Order #11004: Authorizes seizure of all housing and finance authorities and permits government agents to establish forced relocation sites. The government can declare any area of its choosing as "unsafe" and force the entire area to be abandoned of all persons. Authorizes establishment of new "relocation" communities; building new housing with public funds.
Executive Order #11005: Authorizes seizure of all railroads, inland waterways, and storage facilities, both public and private.
Executive Order #13010 (New): This Executive order is entitled Critical Infrastructure Protection. It established a commission made up of members from Federal government departments and agencies, which will be granted dictatorial powers when an emergency is declared.
It is increasingly obvious and no one can deny it that bush plans on taking us and the world to world war and has as we know been conducting his own power grab to control us and enable him to fight his forever wars. As usual he is underhandedly and clandestinely doing to us what he openly criticizes other nations for doing
Bush the decider can do what he wants. We have got to find a way to stop this idiot. I am increasingly believing that our best bet will be Obama and for many reasons. I remember when Oprah first announced that she was going to be campaigning for Obama I was wowed for many reasons while those that think they know something the so called experts said she is just another celebrity and will not significantly help Obama. Wrong!
Saying she felt compelled to support "the man I believe has a new vision for America," Oprah Winfrey spoke passionately about Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama at two rallies in Iowa Saturday. "We need a president who can bring us all together," she said. "I know [Barack Obama] is the one." Earlier in Des Moines, she focused on world affairs. Watch Winfrey endorse Obama
"These are dangerous times, you can feel it. We need a leader who shows us how to hope again in America as a force for peace," Winfrey told the enthusiastic crowd. "I believe Barack Obama will bring statesmanship to the White House," she said. "He's a man who knows who we are and knows who we can be." Read the whole story
** If we are lucky enough to be able to have elections with all the created reasons for Bush to finagle his staying in power I am increasingly believing that Obama will be our nominee and will have the best chance of those running, to stop this forever war Bush has set the seeds for, Give us back our America, and get rid of the Bush created division bringing the American people together again. I believe as I have said in the past that Obama has dropped the right names to help him.
** He has announced that there is a place for Al Gore and president Clinton in his Administration. You know Obama will listen to their counsel and they would positively influence his Presidency. After thinking about the influence Oprah would have on Obama's chances of getting elected and seeing how well the two of them spoke together I have increased confidence that Obama can get elected and Oprah will have one hell of a positive influence not just in America.
** I think that having Gore and Clinton in his Administration and not just Oprah's money but her positive personality loved and respected around the world will go a long way to heal the damage Bush has created to us around the world. I think there is still a chance that we can pull back from this precipice of war if we have an election in 2008!
James M Joiner
Gardner Ma
www.anaveragepatriot.com
It is increasingly obvious and no one can deny it that bush plans on taking us and the world to world war and has as we know been conducting his own power grab to control us and enable him to fight his forever wars. As usual he is underhandedly and clandestinely doing to us what he openly criticizes other nations for doing
Bush the decider can do what he wants. We have got to find a way to stop this idiot. I am increasingly believing that our best bet will be Obama and for many reasons. I remember when Oprah first announced that she was going to be campaigning for Obama I was wowed for many reasons while those that think they know something the so called experts said she is just another celebrity and will not significantly help Obama. Wrong!
Saying she felt compelled to support "the man I believe has a new vision for America," Oprah Winfrey spoke passionately about Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama at two rallies in Iowa Saturday. "We need a president who can bring us all together," she said. "I know [Barack Obama] is the one." Earlier in Des Moines, she focused on world affairs. Watch Winfrey endorse Obama
"These are dangerous times, you can feel it. We need a leader who shows us how to hope again in America as a force for peace," Winfrey told the enthusiastic crowd. "I believe Barack Obama will bring statesmanship to the White House," she said. "He's a man who knows who we are and knows who we can be." Read the whole story
** If we are lucky enough to be able to have elections with all the created reasons for Bush to finagle his staying in power I am increasingly believing that Obama will be our nominee and will have the best chance of those running, to stop this forever war Bush has set the seeds for, Give us back our America, and get rid of the Bush created division bringing the American people together again. I believe as I have said in the past that Obama has dropped the right names to help him.
** He has announced that there is a place for Al Gore and president Clinton in his Administration. You know Obama will listen to their counsel and they would positively influence his Presidency. After thinking about the influence Oprah would have on Obama's chances of getting elected and seeing how well the two of them spoke together I have increased confidence that Obama can get elected and Oprah will have one hell of a positive influence not just in America.
** I think that having Gore and Clinton in his Administration and not just Oprah's money but her positive personality loved and respected around the world will go a long way to heal the damage Bush has created to us around the world. I think there is still a chance that we can pull back from this precipice of war if we have an election in 2008!
James M Joiner
Gardner Ma
www.anaveragepatriot.com
11 comments:
We deffinately need a leader whose first thoughts aren't 'bomb them'. That would be a hell of a start.
While I understand the grave situation we are in and agree we are on a path to destruction, lately I've had my rose colored glasses on a bit.
I'm still holding out hope that cooler heads will prevail.
But as history shows us, war is inevitable. Always has been, always will be.
Still, it's depresing to think there is no hope. I think there is, albeit, small at that.
kucinich still has my vote. the deal of the thing is- we haven't had our constitution really since 1994- when the rethugs took congress and started passing laws that benefited them. this takeover didn't happen overnight- although it feels like it did- we just weren't paying attention. right now- hate to say it- the only countries keeping US in check in any fashion whatsoever- russia and china. strange that they may be the world's saviour. communism saves the world and democracy tries to destroy it. who knew?
polishifter you know I agree and i now think that Obama who wants Gore and Clinton in his Administration with Oprah as an influence and a goodwill ambassador tyhe the world is our best hope if there is an election.
I hate to say it myself but you are antirely right about Russia and China. the thing that stinks though is that the chief idiot will not be held in check he will bite off more than we can chew.
You have a lot of company with Kucinich. I think he is a good man but will not get the nomination.
Here is one Jim:
Dick Cheney’s Song of America
The Plan is for the United States to rule the world. The overt theme is unilateralism, but it is ultimately a story of domination. It calls for the United States to maintain its overwhelming military superiority and prevent new rivals from rising up to challenge it on the world stage. It calls for dominion over friends and enemies alike. It says not that the United States must be more powerful, or most powerful, but that it must be absolutely powerful.
By David Armstrong
Harper's Magazine, 0017789X, Oct 2002, Vol. 305, Issue 1829
Few writers are more ambitious than the writers of government policy papers, and few policy papers are more ambitious than Dick Cheney’s masterwork. It has taken several forms over the last decade and is in fact the product of several ghostwriters (notably Paul Wolfowitz and Colin Powell), but Cheney has been consistent in his dedication to the ideas in the documents that bear his name, and he has maintained a close association with the ideologues behind them. Let us, therefore, call Cheney the author, and this series of documents the Plan.
The Plan was published in unclassified form most recently under the title of Defense Strategy for the 1990s, (pdf) as Cheney ended his term as secretary of defense under the elder George Bush in early 1993, but it is, like “Leaves of Grass,” a perpetually evolving work. It was the controversial Defense Planning Guidance draft of 1992 – from which Cheney, unconvincingly, tried to distance himself – and it was the somewhat less aggressive revised draft of that same year. This June it was a presidential lecture in the form of a commencement address at West Point, and in July it was leaked to the press as yet another Defense Planning Guidance (this time under the pen name of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld). It will take its ultimate form, though, as America’s new national security strategy – and Cheney et al. will experience what few writers have even dared dream: their words will become our reality.
The Plan is for the United States to rule the world. The overt theme is unilateralism, but it is ultimately a story of domination. It calls for the United States to maintain its overwhelming military superiority and prevent new rivals from rising up to challenge it on the world stage. It calls for dominion over friends and enemies alike. It says not that the United States must be more powerful, or most powerful, but that it must be absolutely powerful.
The Plan is disturbing in many ways, and ultimately unworkable. Yet it is being sold now as an answer to the “new realities” of the post-September 11 world, even as it was sold previously as the answer to the new realities of the post-Cold War world. For Cheney, the Plan has always been the right answer, no matter how different the questions.
Cheney’s unwavering adherence to the Plan would be amusing, and maybe a little sad, except that it is now our plan. In its pages are the ideas that we now act upon every day with the full might of the United States military. Strangely, few critics have noted that Cheney’s work has a long history, or that it was once quite unpopular, or that it was created in reaction to circumstances that are far removed from the ones we now face. But Cheney is a well-known action man. One has to admire, in a way, the Babe Ruth-like sureness of his political work. He pointed to center field ten years ago, and now the ball is sailing over the fence.
Before the Plan was about domination it was about money. It took shape in late 1989, when the Soviet threat was clearly on the decline, and, with it, public support for a large military establishment. Cheney seemed unable to come to terms with either new reality. He remained deeply suspicious of the Soviets and strongly resisted all efforts to reduce military spending. Democrats in Congress jeered his lack of strategic vision, and a few within the Bush Administration were whispering that Cheney had become an irrelevant factor in structuring a response to the revolutionary changes taking place in the world.
More adaptable was the up-and-coming General Colin Powell, the newly appointed chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. As Ronald Reagan’s national security adviser, Powell had seen the changes taking place in the Soviet Union firsthand and was convinced that the ongoing transformation was irreversible. Like Cheney, he wanted to avoid military cuts, but he knew they were inevitable. The best he could do was minimize them, and the best way to do that would be to offer a new security structure that would preserve American military capabilities despite reduced resources.
Powell and his staff believed that a weakened Soviet Union would result in shifting alliances and regional conflict. The United States was the only nation capable of managing the forces at play in the world; it would have to remain the preeminent military power in order to ensure the peace and shape the emerging order in accordance with American interests. U.S. military strategy, therefore, would have to shift from global containment to managing less-well-defined regional struggles and unforeseen contingencies. To do this, the United States would have to project a military “forward presence” around the world; there would be fewer troops but in more places. This plan still would not be cheap, but through careful restructuring and superior technology, the job could be done with 25 percent fewer troops. Powell insisted that maintaining superpower status must be the first priority of the U.S. military. “We have to put a shingle outside our door saying, ‘Superpower Lives Here,’ no matter what the Soviets do,” he said at the time. He also insisted that the troop levels be proposed were the bare minimum necessary to do so. This concept would come to be known as the “Base Force.”
Powell’s work on the subject proved timely. The Berlin Wall fell on November 9, 1989, and five days later Powell had his new strategy ready to present to Cheney. Even as decades of repression were ending in Eastern Europe, however, Cheney still could not abide even the force and budget reductions Powell proposed. Yet he knew that cuts were unavoidable. Having no alternative of his own to offer, therefore, he reluctantly encouraged Powell to present his ideas to the president. Powell did so the next day; Bush made no promises but encouraged him to keep at it.
Less encouraging was the reaction of Paul Wolfowitz, the undersecretary of defense for policy. A lifelong proponent of the unilateralist, maximum-force approach, he shared Cheney’s skepticism about the Eastern Bloc and so put his own staff to work on a competing plan that would somehow accommodate the possibility of Soviet backsliding.
As Powell and Wolfowitz worked out their strategies, Congress was losing patience. New calls went up for large cuts in defense spending in light of the new global environment. The harshest critique of Pentagon planning came from a usually dependable ally of the military establishment, Georgia Democrat Sam Nunn, chairman of the Senate Armed Services committee. Nunn told fellow senators in March 1990 that there was a “threat blank” in the administration’s proposed $295 billion defense budget and that the Pentagon’s “basic assessment of the overall threat to our national security” was “rooted in the past.” The world had changed and yet the “development of a new military strategy that responds to the changes in the threat has not yet occurred.” Without that response, no dollars would be forthcoming.
Nunn’s message was clear. Powell and Wolfowitz began filling in the blanks. Powell started promoting a Zen-like new rationale for his Base Force approach. With the Soviets rapidly becoming irrelevant, Powell argued, the United States could no longer assess its military needs on the basis of known threats. Instead, the Pentagon should focus on maintaining the ability to address a wide variety of new and unknown challenges. This shift from a “threat based” assessment of military requirements to a “capability based” assessment would become a key theme of the Plan. The United States would move from countering Soviet attempts at dominance to ensuring its own dominance. Again, this project would not be cheap.
Powell’s argument, circular though it may have been, proved sufficient to hold off Congress. Winning support among his own colleagues, however, proved more difficult. Cheney remained deeply skeptical about the Soviets, and Wolfowitz was only slowly coming around. To account for future uncertainties, Wolfowitz recommended drawing down U.S. forces to roughly the levels proposed by Powell, but doing so at a much slower pace; seven years as opposed to the four Powell suggested. He also built in a “crisis response/reconstitution” clause that would allow for reversing the process if events in the Soviet Union, or elsewhere, turned ugly.
With these now elements in place, Cheney saw something that might work. By combining Powell’s concepts with those of Wolfowitz, he could counter congressional criticism that his proposed defense budget was out of line with the new strategic reality, while leaving the door open for future force increases. In late June, Wolfowitz, Powell, and Cheney presented their plan to the president, and within as few weeks Bush was unveiling the new strategy.
Bush laid out the rationale for the Plan in a speech in Aspen, Colorado, on August 2, 1990. He explained that since the danger of global war had substantially receded, the principal threats to American security would emerge in unexpected quarters. To counter those threats, he said, the United States would increasingly base the size and structure of its forces on the need to respond to “regional contingencies” and maintain a peacetime military presence overseas. Meeting that need would require maintaining the capability to quickly deliver American forces to any “corner of the globe,” and that would mean retaining many major weapons systems then under attack in Congress as overly costly and unnecessary, including the “Star Wars” missile-defense program. Despite those massive outlays, Bush insisted that the proposed restructuring would allow the United States to draw down its active forces by 25 percent in the years ahead, the same figure Powell had projected ten months earlier.
The Plan’s debut was well timed. By a remarkable coincidence, Bush revealed it the very day Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi forces invaded Kuwait.
The Gulf War temporarily reduced the pressure to cut military spending. It also diverted attention from some of the Plan’s less appealing aspects. In addition, it inspired what would become one of the Plan’s key features: the use of “overwhelming force” to quickly defeat enemies, a concept since dubbed the Powell Doctrine.
Once the Iraqi threat was “contained,” Wolfowitz returned to his obsession with the Soviets, planning various scenarios involved possible Soviet intervention in regional conflicts. The failure of the hard-liner coup against Gorbachev in August 1991, however, made it apparent that such planning might be unnecessary. Then, in late December, just as the Pentagon was preparing to put the Plan in place, the Soviet Union collapsed.
With the Soviet Union gone, the United States had a choice. It could capitalize on the euphoria of the moment by nurturing cooperative relations and developing multilateral structures to help guide the global realignment then taking place; or it could consolidate its power and pursue a strategy of unilateralism and global dominance. It chose the latter course.
In early 1992, as Powell and Cheney campaigned to win congressional support for their augmented Base Force plan, a new logic entered into their appeals. The United States, Powell told members of the House Armed Services Committee, required “sufficient power” to “deter any challenger from ever dreaming of challenging us on the world stage.” To emphasize the point, he cast the United States in the role of street thug. “I want to be the bully on the block,” he said, implanting in the mind of potential opponents that “there is no future in trying to challenge the armed forces of the United States.”
As Powell and Cheney were making this new argument in their congressional rounds, Wolfowitz was busy expanding the concept and working to have it incorporated into U.S. policy. During the early months of 1992, Wolfowitz supervised the preparation of an internal Pentagon policy statement used to guide military officials in the preparation of their forces, budgets, and strategies. The classified document, known as the Defense Planning Guidance, depicted a world dominated by the United States, which would maintain its superpower status through a combination of positive guidance and overwhelming military might. the image was one of a heavily armed City on a Hill.
The DPG stated that the “first objective” of U.S. defense strategy was “to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival.” Achieving this objective required that the United States “prevent any hostile power from dominating a region” of strategic significance. America’s new mission would be to convince allies and enemies alike “that they need not aspire to a greater role or pursue a more aggressive posture to protect their legitimate interests.”
Another new theme was the use of preemptive military force. The options, the DPG noted, ranged from taking preemptive military action to head off a nuclear, chemical, or biological attack to “punishing” or “threatening punishment of” aggressors “through a variety of means,” including strikes against weapons-manufacturing facilities.
The DPG also envisioned maintaining a substantial U.S. nuclear arsenal while discouraging the development of nuclear programs in other countries. It depicted a “U.S.-led system of collective security” that implicitly precluded the need for rearmament of any king by countries such as Germany and Japan. And it called for the “early introduction” of a global missile-defense system that would presumably render all missile-launched weapons, including those of the United States, obsolete. (The United States would, of course, remain the world’s dominant military power on the strength of its other weapons systems.)
The story, in short, was dominance by way of unilateral action and military superiority. While coalitions – such as the one formed during the Gulf War – held “considerable promise for promoting collective action,” the draft DPG stated, the United States should expect future alliances to be “ad hoc assemblies, often not lasting beyond the crisis being confronted, and in many cases carrying only general agreement over the objectives to be accomplished.” It was essential to create “the sense that the world order is ultimately backed by the U.S.” and essential that America position itself “to act independently when collective action cannot be orchestrated” or in crisis situation requiring immediate action. “While the U.S. cannot become the world’s policeman,” the document said, “we will retain the preeminent responsibility for addressing selectively those wrongs which threaten not only our interests, but those of our allies or friends.” Among the interests the draft indicated the United States would defend in this manner were “access to vital raw materials, primarily Persian Gulf oil, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles, [and] threats to U.S. citizens from terrorism.”
The DPC was leaked to the New York Times in March 1992. Critics on both the left and the right attacked it immediately. Then-presidential candidate Pat Buchanan portrayed candidate a “blank check” to America’s allies by suggesting the United States would “go to war to defend their interests.” Bill Clinton’s deputy campaign manager, George Stephanopoulos, characterized it as an attempt by Pentagon officials to “find an excuse for big defense budgets instead of downsizing.” Delaware Senator Joseph Biden criticized the Plan’s vision of a “Pax Americana, a global security system where threats to stability are suppressed or destroyed by U.S. military power.” Even those who found the document’s stated goals commendable feared that its chauvinistic tone could alienate many allies. Cheney responded by attempting to distance himself from the Plan. The Pentagon’s spokesman dismissed the leaked document as a “low-level draft” and claimed that Cheney had not seen it. Yet a fifteen-page section opened by proclaiming that it constituted “definitive guidance from the Secretary of Defense.”
Powell took a more forthright approach to dealing with the flap: he publicly embraced the DPG’s core concept. In a TV interview, he said he believed it was “just fine” that the United States reign as the world’s dominant military power. “I don’t think we should apologize for that,” he said. Despite bad reviews in the foreign press, Powell insisted that America’s European allies were “not afraid” of U.S. military might because it was “power that could be trusted” and “will not be misused.”
Mindful that the draft DPG’s overt expression of U.S. dominance might not fly, Powell in the same interview also trotted out a new rationale for the original Base Force plan. He argued that in a post-Soviet world, filled with new dangers, the United States needed the ability to fight on more than one front at a time. “One of the most destabilizing things we could do,” he said, “is to cut our forces so much that if we’re tied up in one area of the world ..... and we are not seen to have the ability to influence another area of the world, we might invite just the sort of crisis we’re trying to deter.” This two-war strategy provided a possible answer to Nunn’s “threat blank.” One unknown enemy wasn’t enough to justify lavish defense budgets, but two unknown enemies might do the trick.
Within a few weeks the Pentagon had come up with a more comprehensive response to the DPG furor. A revised version was leaked to the press that was significantly less strident in tone, though only slightly less strident in fact. While calling for the United States to prevent “any hostile power from dominating a region critical to our interests,” the new draft stressed that America would act in concert with its allies – when possible. It also suggested the United Nations might take an expanded role in future political, economic, and security matters, a concept conspicuously absent from the original draft.
The controversy died down, and, with a presidential campaign under way, the Pentagon did nothing to stir it up again. Following Bush’s defeat, however, the Plan reemerged. In January 1993, in his very last days in office. Cheney released a final version. The newly titled Defense Strategy for the 1990s retained the soft touch of the revised draft DPG as well as its darker themes. The goal remained to preclude “hostile competitors from challenging our critical interests” and preventing the rise of a new super-power. Although it expressed a “preference” for collective responses in meeting such challenges, it made clear that the United States would play the lead role in any alliance. Moreover, it noted that collective action would “not always be timely.” Therefore, the United States needed to retain the ability to “act independently, if necessary.” To do so would require that the United States maintain its massive military superiority. Others were not encouraged to follow suit. It was kinder, gentler dominance, but it was dominance all the same. And it was this thesis that Cheney and company nailed to the door on their way out.
The new administration tacitly rejected the heavy-handed, unilateral approach to U.S. primacy favored by Powell, Cheney, and Wolfowitz. Taking office in the relative calm of the early post – Cold War era, Clinton sought to maximize America’s existing position of strength and promote its interests through economic diplomacy, multilateral institutions (dominated by the United States), greater international free trade, and the development of allied coalitions, including American-led collective military action. American policy, in short, shifted from global dominance to globalism.
Clinton also failed to prosecute military campaigns with sufficient vigor to satisfy the defense strategists of the previous administration. Wolfowitz found Clinton’s Iraq policy especially infuriating. During the Gulf War, Wolfowitz harshly criticized the decision – endorsed by Powell and Cheney – to end the war once the U.N. mandate of driving Saddam’s forces from Kuwait had been fulfilled, leaving the Iraqi dictator in office. He called on the Clinton Administration to finish the job by arming Iraqi opposition forces and sending U.S. ground troops to defense a base of operation for them in the southern region of the country. In a 1996 editorial, Wolfowitz raised the prospect of launching a preemptive attack against Iraq. “Should we sit idly by,” he wrote, “with our passive containment policy and our inept cover operations, and wait until a tyrant possessing large quantities of weapons of mass destruction and sophisticated delivery systems strikes out at us?” Wolfowitz suggested it was “necessary” to “go beyond the containment strategy.”
Wolfowitz’s objections to Clinton’s military tactics were not limited to Iraq. Wolfowitz had endorsed President Bush’s decision in late 1992 to intervene in Somalia on a limited humanitarian basis. Clinton later expanded the mission into a broader peacekeeping effort, a move that ended in disaster. With perfect twenty-twenty hindsight, Wolfowitz decried Clinton’s decision to send U.S. troops into combat “where there is no significant U.S. national interest.” He took a similar stance on Clinton’s ill-fated democracy-building effort in Haiti, chastising the president for engaging “American military prestige” on an issue” of the little or no importance” to U.S. interests. Bosnia presented a more complicated mix of posturing and ideologics. While running for president, Clinton had scolded the Bush Administration for failing to take action to stem the flow of blood in the Balkans. Once in office, however, and chastened by their early misadventures in Somalia and Haiti, Clinton and his advisers struggled to articulate a coherent Bosnia policy. Wolfowitz complained in 1994 of the administration’s failure to “develop an effective course of action.' He personally advocated arming the Bosnian Muslims in their fight against the Serbs. Powell, on the other hand, publicly cautioned against intervention. In 1995 a U.S.-led NATO bombing campaign, combined with a Croat-Muslim ground offensive, forced the Serbs into negotiations, leading to the Dayton Peace Accords. In 1999, as Clinton rounded up support for joint U.S.-NATO action in Kosovo, Wolfowitz hectored the president for failing to act quickly enough.
After eight years of what Cheney et al. regarded as wrong-headed military adventures and pinprick retaliatory strikes, the Clinton Administration – mercifully, in their view – came to an end. With the ascension of George W. Bush to the presidency, the authors of the Plan returned to government, ready to pick up where they had left off. Cheney of course, became vice president, Powell became secretary of state, and Wolfowitz moved into the number two slot at the Pentagon, as Donald Rumsfeld’s deputy. Other contributors also returned: Two prominent members of the Wolfowitz team that crafted the original DPG took up posts on Cheney’s staff. I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, who served as Wolfowitz’s deputy during Bush I, became the vice president’s chief of staff and national security adviser. And Eric Edelman, an assistant deputy undersecretary of defense in the first Bush Administration, became a top foreign policy adviser to Cheney.
Cheney and company had not changed their minds during the Clinton interlude about the correct course for U.S. policy, but they did not initially appear bent on resurrecting the Plan. Rather than present a unified vision of foreign policy to the world, in the early going the administration focused on promoting a series of seemingly unrelated initiatives. Notable among these were missile defense and space-based weaponry, long-standing conservative causes. In addition, a distinct tone of unilateralism emerged as the new administration announced its intent to abandon the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia in order to pursue missile defense; its opposition to U.S. ratification of an international nuclear-test-ban pact; and its refusal to become a party to an International Criminal Court. It also raised the prospect of ending the self-imposed U.S. moratorium on nuclear testing initiated by the President’s father during the 1992 presidential campaign. Moreover, the administration adopted a much tougher diplomatic posture, as evidenced, most notably, by a distinct hardening of relations with both China and North Korea. While none of this was inconsistent with the concept of U.S. dominance, these early actions did not, at the time, seem to add up to a coherent strategy.
It was only after September 11 that the Plan emerged in full. Within days of the attacks, Wolfowitz and Libby began calling for unilateral military action against Iraq, on the shaky premise that Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network could not have pulled off the assaults without Saddam Hussein’s assistance. At the time, Bush rejected such appeals, but Wolfowitz kept pushing and the President soon came around. In his State of the Union address in January, Bush labeled Iraq, Iran, and North Korea an “axis of evil,” and warned that he would “not wait on events” to prevent them from using weapons of mass destruction against the United States. He reiterated his commitment to preemption in his West Point speech in June. “If we wait for threats to fully materialize we will have waited too long,” he said. “We must take the battle to the enemy, disrupt his plans and confront the worst threats before they emerge.” Although it was less noted, Bush in that same speech also reintroduced the Plan’s central theme. He declared that the United States would prevent the emergence of a rival power by maintaining “military strengths beyond the challenge.” With that, the President effectively adopted a strategy his father’s administration had developed ten years earlier to ensure that the United States would remain the world’s preeminent power. While the headlines screamed “preemption,” no one noticed the declaration of the dominance strategy.
In case there was any doubt about the administration’s intentions, the Pentagon’s new DPG lays them out. Signed by Wolfowitz’s new boss, Donald Rumsfeld, in May and leaked to the Los Angeles Times in July, it contains all the key elements of the original Plan and adds several complementary features. The preemptive strikes envisioned in the original draft DPG are now “unwarned attacks.” The old Powell-Cheney notion of military “forward presence” is now “forwarded deterrence.” The use of overwhelming force to defeat an enemy called for in the Powell Doctrine is now labeled an “effects based” approach.
Some of the names have stayed the same. Missile defense is back, stronger than ever, and the call goes up again for a shift from a “threat based” structure to a “capabilities based” approach. The new DPG also emphasizes the need to replace the so-called Cold War strategy of preparing to fight two major conflicts simultaneously with what the Los Angeles Times refers to as “a more complex approach aimed at dominating air and space on several fronts.” This, despite the fact that Powell had originally conceived – and the first Bush Administration had adopted – the two-war strategy as a means of filling the “threat blank” left by the end of the Cold War.
Rumsfeld’s version adds a few new ideas, most impressively the concept of preemptive strikes with nuclear weapons. These would be earth-penetrating nuclear weapons used for attacking “hardened and deeply buried targets,” such as command-and-control bunkers, missile silos, and heavily fortified underground facilities used to build and store weapons of mass destruction. The concept emerged earlier this year when the administration’s Nuclear Posture Review leaked out. At the time, arms-control experts warned that adopting the NPR’s recommendations would undercut existing arms-control treaties, do serious harm to nonproliferation efforts, set off new rounds of testing, and dramatically increase the prospectus of nuclear weapons being used in combat. Despite these concerns, the administration appears intent on developing the weapons. In a final flourish, the DPG also directs the military to develop cyber-, laser-, and electronic-warfare capabilities to ensure U.S. dominion over the heavens.
Rumsfeld spelled out these strategies in Foreign affairs earlier this year, and it is there that he articulated the remaining elements of the Plan; unilateralism and global dominance. Like the revised DPG of 1992, Rumsfeld feigns interest in collective action but ultimately rejects it as impractical. “Wars can benefit from coalitions,” he writes, “but they should not be fought by committee.” And coalitions, he adds, “must not determine the mission.” The implication is the United States will determine the missions and lead the fights. Finally, Rumsfeld expresses the key concept of the Plan: preventing the emergence of rival powers. Like the original draft DPG of 1992, he states that America’s goal is to develop and maintain the military strength necessary to “dissuade” rivals or adversaries from “competing.” with no challengers, and a proposed defense budget of $379 billion for next year, the United States would reign over all its surveys.
Reaction to the latest edition of the Plan has, thus far, focused on preemption. Commentators parrot the administration’s line, portraying the concept of preemptory strikes as a “new” strategy aimed at combating terrorism. In an op-ed piece for the Washington Post following Bush’s West Point address, former Clinton adviser William Galston described preemption as part of a “brand-new security doctrine,” and warned of possible negative diplomatic consequences. Others found the concept more appealing. Loren Thompson of the conservative Lexington Institute hailed the “Bush Doctrine” as “a necessary response to the new dangers that America faces” and declared it “the biggest shift in strategic thinking in two generations.” Wall Street Journal editor Robert Bartley echoed that sentiment, writing that “no talk of this ilk has been heard from American leaders since John Foster Dulles talked of rolling back the Iron Curtain.”
Preemption, of course, is just part of the Plan, and the Plan is hardly new. It is a warmed-over version of the strategy Cheney and his coauthors rolled out in 1992 as the answer to the end of the Cold War. Then the goal was global dominance, and it met with bad reviews. Now it is the answer to terrorism. The emphasis is on preemption, and the reviews are generally enthusiastic. Through all of this, the dominance motif remains, though largely undetected.
This country once rejected “unwarned” attacks such as Pearl Harbor as barbarous and unworthy of a civilized nation. Today many cheer the prospect of conducting sneak attacks – potentially with nuclear weapons – on piddling powers run by tin-pot despots.
We also once denounced those who tried to rule the world. Our primary objection (at least officially) to the Soviet Union as its quest for global domination. Through the successful employment of the tools of containment, deterrence, collective security, and diplomacy – the very methods we now reject – we rid ourselves and the world of the Evil Empire. Having done so, we now pursue the very thing for which we opposed it. And now that the Soviet Union is gone, there appears to be no one left to stop us.
Perhaps, however, there is. The Bush Administration and its loyal opposition seem not to grasp that the quests for dominance generate backlash. Those threatened with preemption may themselves launch preemptory strikes. And even those who are successfully “preempted” or dominated may object and find means to strike back. Pursuing such strategies may, paradoxically, result in greater factionalism and rivalry, precisely the things we seek to end.
Not all Americans share Colin Powell’s desire to be “the bully on the block.” In fact, some believe that by following a different path the United States has an opportunity to establish a more lasting security environment. As Dartmouth professors Stephen Brooks and William Woblforth wrote recently in Foreign Affairs, “Unipolarity makes it possible to be the global bully – but it also offers the United States the luxury of being able to look beyond its immediate needs to its own, and the world’s, long-term interests. ..... Magnanimity and restraint in the face of temptation are tenets of successful statecraft that have proved their worth.” Perhaps, in short, we can achieve our desired ends by means other than global domination.
Try this one Jim:
The planned collapse of USA
By Peter Chamberlin
12/09/07 "Online Journal" --- - There is no shortage of speculation about "why" our leaders are still adamantly planning for the destruction of Iran, in the face of overwhelming popular opposition, even though everyone except the neocons and their allies believes that America would not survive our own actions. An irrational attack is planned and apparently the decision has been chiseled in stone. It may be for Israel. It may be for oil. Maybe it is for world domination?
We are launching a nuclear world war to save us from ourselves. "We have found the enemy and he is us." --Pogo. We risk blowing the world apart, to avoid watching America slowly choke on its own excesses.
The government has known for decades that America is on a countdown to self-destruction. Among the elite it is common knowledge that our "global economy" must one day collapse from its own dead weight. In 1974 an intensive research project was undertaken by the Stanford Research Institute and the Charles F. Kettering Foundation for the Dept. of Education. Their final report was released as the Changing Images of Man. It was compiled by the SRI Center for the Study of Social Policy, Director Willis Harmon. This is a far-reaching investigation into how the basic nature of man might be changed. The Aquarian Conspiracy describes the implementation of their work in the real world..
The most reassuring part of "Images" is that it confirms my own conclusions about our crisis, but it is also the most disturbing part, for it confirms my worst reservations about this time.
The object of the research was the development of a plausible vision of the future in which democratic methods survive, major problems are managed successfully if not resolved, and the unfolding of the human potential continues to expand. In other words, the postulation of a "desirable future" including feasible paths to its realization . . .
The government was looking forward to a very troubling future, trying to figure out the best path through it. The plan was to find ways to shape and mold mankind into a new cultural image, complete with new ideas and ideologies, even religious ones. The root of the problem was human nature, and solution was to reshape the competing forces of daily life, in order to forge a new image of a new human nature. The researchers were brutally honest in seeking all available knowledge pertaining to their research, and in assessing the current common image of man-on-earth.
The research revealed that there were a multitude of crises that were about to intersect in America's near future. Not the least of these converging catastrophes was a rapidly approaching breakdown of both American capitalism and democracy. The collapse was a natural result of globalism and monopoly capitalism. The basic greed that powers the system eroded the American political and economic structures, exposing the foundation of immorality and unfairness that amplifies the social unrest. The Stanford researchers clearly predicted that the American economy was destined to collapse from its own dead weight. The data also showed that that economic collapse was to be accompanied by disastrous social repercussions, such as rioting and upheaval, which would lead us into a "garrison state."
The thing about this research is that this work has confirmed that our economy based on parasitic capitalism, where the small elite sits atop the heap of men and gorges on their lifeblood, is destroying the social fabric of America. This system is based on a stacked deck, where the top elite always reap the profits that are made to rise to the top through the corporate profits-based system. The research confirmed that the growing inequities of such a system were ever increasing and with them, elevated social tensions. A system based on usury and putting everyone in the "poor house" is an economic order that is guaranteed to produce a democratic revolution, whenever the misery index of the armed populace exceeds the limits that they are willing to peacefully bear, without striking back at the source of their misery.
Changing Images of Man predicts an American economic collapse and a "garrison" (police) state," if the overwhelming inequities of our economic system are not corrected by powerful multinationals making more humane decisions. Alternatives to this doomsday scenario are discussed, all of which point to the need to devote all available resources towards transforming the image of man, changing man's nature, instead of altering the corrupted economic system which has brought America to this dire state. In this government study it was inappropriate to denounce the evil culprits behind all our troubles (who pull the strings on government itself), even though the task was to document and remedy the damage that they have done. Instead, they are cited as the hopeful "saviors," that we should look to for help and leadership. The hypocrisy of the hegemons! The authors admit that it is "utopian in 1974 to think of the multinational corporations as potentially among our most effective mechanisms for husbanding the earth's resources and optimizing their use for human benefit -- the current popular image of the corporation tends to be more that of the spoiler and the exploiter."
Instead of charging the people who are responsible for our situation (such as men like David Rockefeller), for manipulating our economy and our democracy to maximize their profits, the multi-national corporations and their owners were exalted as the potential saviors of mankind. Rockefeller and the elite have consistently taken steps to dominate the world by controlling people through "humanitarian" projects which, in the end, turn out to be profit mechanisms. The "green revolution" to spread corporate farming to the Third World has been the key to globalization's destabilizing of world labor markets, in order to create populations of "refugee workers," who are willing to go anywhere to find work for slave wages. This is the cause of the wave of illegal immigration into the US from Mexico. This is part of the proof that there are powerful individuals who are using their economic power to undermine nations in a long-term scheme to gain control of nations and multiply their profits.
Here David Rockefeller admits media collusion with his one world plans: "We are grateful to the Washington Post, the New York Times, Time Magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost forty years. It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subjected to the light of publicity during those years. But now the world is more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supra-national sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto-determination practiced in past centuries."
Rockefeller writes on page 405 of his memoirs: "Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as 'internationalists' and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure - one world, if you will. If that is the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it." (Activists Go Face to Face With Evil As Rockefeller Confronted)
Everything that "Images" suggested to remedy shortcomings in the economic system was based on the assumption that men like this would acquire a new corporate benevolence, with CEOs gaining basic humanity. According to Rockefeller himself (who freely admits his efforts to replace America with a "one world" order), he has been working for the greater good of man, all along.
Their conclusions on American political shortcomings were that these would be tended to by the new improved humane politicians, sort of like Bush's "compassionate conservatives." Step 4 of their six-part strategy to "Bring About a Non-Catostrophic Transformation" -- "Encourage a politics of righteousness and a heightened sense of public responsibilities of the private sector . . . A politics of righteousness might have been laudable in any generation; it may be indispensable for safe passage through the times just ahead."
The report authors recognize the inevitability of the rising new image of man, describing it as a quasi-religious awakening within the collective mind of man, man's new human nature, relating it to the actual process of spiritual learning that has been going on within religions for thousands of years. They praise Freemasonry and the skills and disciplines inculcated within its members, speculating that their ways might be the key to shoring-up our free enterprise democratic society.
They developed a strategy to revitalize America's motivational images, symbols and institutions, outlining five separate approaches to the problem, describing the pluses and the pitfalls of each, according to their effects upon society. These approaches are defined as "restorative, simulative, manipulative, persuasive and facilitative." Restoration of crumbling icons works best in the early stages of societal transformation (revitalization cycle). The simulative strategy introduces new ideas, whenever the collapse of the old order becomes apparent. The manipulative strategy seeks to limit individual freedoms. Persuasive propaganda phase is to be coupled with proven mind control techniques, to keep down the social upheaval and shape the emerging image.
"No doubt existing consciousness-changing, behavior-shaping, subliminal persuasion, and other conditioning techniques could be used to accomplish some sort of transformation of sobering proportions (we ought to be able to be more effective than Nazi Germany). After previously citing Nazi reinvigoration of the Germanic icons and ideals."
The transforming revitalization process mirrors the psychiatric process of leading a patient through a psychotic break and the restructuring of his life, but on a national scale.
Once the transformation becomes apparent, social stability will become a problem, especially when society feels pushed by overextending the simulative stage. Actions taken to increase the polarization between "transformation enthusiasts and the conservatives" are called "constructive," except when it is desirable to take actions that "contribute to social cohesion." They were searching for the best path to bring about a controlled deconstruction of everything that "America" means and the reconstruction of a new improved vision of America. They are midwifes to the delivery of the "New World Order," as they go about the dirty business of guiding society through that predicted period of "friendly fascism."
The great anomaly is given as the great chasm between an efficiently functioning profit-driven capitalist society and the human needs and desires of that society which go unmet, so that "profits" can be taken. In fact, the "profit" really amounts to the bread that is taken from the poor. The inequities and the unfairness of the corporate system are causing the breakdown of American capitalism and American democracy. The American catastrophe is causing the breakdown of the world economy for the same reason, the basic inability of monopoly capitalism to meet the basic needs demanded by the world's people.
Bush's appointed task is to bully America through this turbulent period of upheaval, with as little disruption of corporate activity as possible. Government has taken the words of this study to heart, preparing a manipulative transformation, to divert or preempt the coming collapse of our nation with a massive war today. This is also one of the primary reasons for the coming world war, to serve as a prelude to American martial law. Instead of calling out the troops after the insurrection has begun, they plan to call out the troops first. If the American military is to forcefully control the homeland, including their own relatives, then the troops must first be convinced that the nation's survival depends upon their patriotic actions. This is why the world war against Iran has not started yet, because our National Guard must first be convinced that its duty is to put down the American rebellion which will surely accompany the bombing of Iran. The timing for their great takeover is crucial, if they want to move America past (through) the social unrest as quickly as possible.
Here are the "Elements of a Strategy for a Non-catastrophic Transition":
Promote awareness of the unavoidability of the transformation.
Foster construction of a guiding vision of a workable society built around the new image of man and new social paradigm.
Foster a period of experimentation and tolerance for diverse alternatives.
Encourage a politics of righteousness and a heightened sense of public responsibilities of the private sector . . . A politics of righteousness might have been laudable in any generation; it may be indispensable for safe passage through the times just ahead.
Promote systematic exploration of and foster education regarding man's inner life, his subjective experience.
Plan adequate social controls for the transition period while safeguarding against longer-term losses of freedom . . . Regulation and restraint of behavior will be necessary in order to hold the society together while it goes around a difficult corner.
There must be a new economics to deal with the "new scarcities." Arguing for corporate America to adopt a humanitarian aspect, the argument is made for an alternative "new socialism," where important sectors like energy might be nationalized for the good of the country, and greater pressure put upon corporations to mandate a sort of social awareness of employee needs, as much as shareholder profits.
"The appropriate question may be not so much how to bring about a transformation . . . but rather how to facilitate a non-catastrophic transformation." [page 195]
"Construct a guiding version of a workable society, built around a new positive image of humankind and corresponding vision of a suitable social paradigm. As the old order shows increasing signs of falling apart, some adequate vision of what may be simultaneously building is urgently needed for mobilization of constructive effort. The guiding vision has to include some way of providing for full and valued participation in the economic and social affairs of the community and society, especially for those who are physically and mentally able to contribute but find themselves in a state of unwilling idleness and deterioration of spirit."
Despite all the report's shortcomings and its hypocrisy, it does make some sound observations about what is needed for our immediate survival. We should take it as a guide to what our government knows about the coming mega-crisis and a template to help us see what changes we could make if there were truly a new economy, a new social contract, a new American state. For it is obvious to all those who take the time to look, that we are headed into period of national freefall, when American society plunges head first, into a dark abyss of uncertainty, as the old order passes away, and the New World Order rushes in to fill the void.
We are seeing the planned collapse of America, coming down the road we are on. What are we going to do to get our nation off that highway to hell?
larry I again have to ask where do you find this stuff? You know we have discussed all of this and yesterday were talking about the one Government world.
I coined the term Bush's forever War and we always discuss that and everything else. As I heep saying, by the time someone that is supposed to be an expert and will be listened to writes about the problem it is already too late to stop.
You know, I'm looking at what these idiots did with the language. It is what they always do. It is what they did to attack Iraq. It is what they are doing to get to attack Iran.
If you think something is wrong or too harsh they will change the wording until you are stupid enough to let them do what they want. Nothing will change with their goal though.
As I constantly say, everything, the Diplomacy of confrontation, the missile shield, The in your face rhetoric, war in the middle east, instigation to war with Iran, everything, is designed to get this forever war in full swing with the results being a one world Government with the US in charge.
This will be total chaos though as the rest of the worlds leading powers are not going to let this happen. Also as we discuss often world leaders are consolidating their power and openly getting together to confront Bush head on.
It blows me away that everyone does not see the inevitable abd thinks they can stop this. It is now beyond control.
Larry keep it coming. You sent me the planned collapse of America a day or two ago and I worked it into one of my stories though we have discussed it many times.
When I first told people at kos that , that is what was happening amongst other things, yhey were pissed at ma as I said and said no US President would do that.
Now the truth is out and of course it is again too late to stop. It really bothers me that most people are so slow to catch on. At this point as you know I think, we are powerless to do anything but we must keep trying!
Harpers Magazine:
The irreplaceable Fritz Stern reminds us that as a democracy with two-hundred thirty years of experience, America is better situated than most to weather the storms of a wannabe tyrant. “But that,” he adds, “would presuppose that such a nation really understood its heritage and had a genuine historic sense.” We live now with a Government that shamelessly fabricates and alters history—both from the last two hundred years and from the last six years. It does so with a purpose—making its outrageous deeds seem perfectly reasonable and in tune with the past.
But the Founding Fathers had a very profound sense of history. As I have noted before in discussing the influence of Virgil’s writings on some of the founding precepts, most of the Founding Fathers were classics scholars. They knew their Virgil, Ovid and Horace, and traded quips, indecipherable to most of us today, based on their readings. And they especially knew the historians—Livy, Tacitus and Sallust. If there was one epoch in the history of Rome that held them captive, then it can quickly be identified—it was the long descent of the Roman Republic into empire and tyranny. How did a state blessed with the republican institutions they spilled blood to gain come to loose them? What was this process? How could it be guarded against? These were questions that preoccupied them. Questions, moreover, that stand in the shadows behind the debates over the Constitution, the Federalist Papers and much of the genesis of our modern institutions. It is of course no coincidence that much of the nomenclature of the new republic can be drawn from the pages of Livy’s Ab urbe condita: president, senate, congress… and even some now-lost offices such as censor and auditor.
Distilling that historical experience to its essence, however, we come to a consensus on the threat to the republic. It is internal, and it is the risk that one man aided by a clique will assume tyrannical authority and end the republic. As Livy reminds, the citizens of the nascent republic “valued their liberty so much precisely because their last king had been so great a tyrant.” And if there was one essential principle which stood as the republic’s bulwark against tyranny, then it was this: that “no man stood above the law.” Both of these phrases appear in the second book, in which Livy lays the foundation stones of the new republic, and repeatedly warns that deviation from these precepts will mean ruin.
It is common for people today to question how any leader can be a tyrant who achieves office through popular election, and, indeed, who remains popular. But such talk is foolish and betrays an ignorance of the origins of the term and the historical context of its use. Throughout history, tyrants came to power through means of control and manipulation of popular opinion. This was so familiar a feature to the thinkers of antiquity, that Aristotle charts it as a characteristic of the tyrant. And in the history of the dark, past century, how many little men in search of a balcony came to power on the back of a jubilant and cheering mob? And indeed, no less a man that Thomas Jefferson was quick to remind his fellow citizens of this principle. And it was Jefferson who raised the cry of “tyrant” against the president, when he proceeded in disregard of the constraints of Constitution and law, setting into play a plan of persecution targeting his political opponents and the poor, downtrodden and defenseless immigrants. Jefferson spoke sharply and loudly because the republic was under siege by a popularly elected (and popular) government. He was right to have done so, and he is vindicated by history for it.
The question was whether the president has put himself above the law and assumed powers far beyond those the Constitution measured to him.
And today, America faces precisely this question. We have a president who acts in shameless disregard of the Constitution’s restraints upon his office, and who feels himself above the law, and who constantly seeks to manipulate and mislead the public. How many times just in the last week have we witnessed this?
On Monday, the White House announced a National Intelligence Estimate, which has been available for half a year and whose release Vice President Cheney has vehemently fought. It tells us that Iran packed in its nuclear weapons program under the pressure of sanctions in 2003. Bush tells us that he learned about this “only the prior week.” But the lie is quickly exposed as McConnell acknowledges having briefed him at least in August, and other intelligence figures note that the basic information on which the intelligence assessment rested was in hand since June. Nevertheless, let’s recount some of the statements that a president who fully understood what the intelligence assessment on this issue was made to the American public in a predictable effort to build sentiment for a war which his Vice President was busily plotting:
March 31st: “Iran is trying to develop a nuclear weapon…”
June 5th: Iran’s “pursuit of nuclear weapons…”
June 19th: “consequences to the Iranian government if they continue to pursue a nuclear weapon…”
July 12th: “the same regime in Iran that is pursuing nuclear weapons…”
August 6th: “this is a government that has proclaimed its desire to build a nuclear weapon…”
October 17th: “I’ve told people that if you’re interested in avoiding World War Three, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from have the knowledge to make a nuclear weapon.”
Is this the language of a president concerned for the defense of his country and determined to act against a threat, or is it the language of a man exploiting a more remote threat for purposes of petty fear-mongering? If the latter, this is the classic behavior of a tyrant, who as Aristotle reminds us, always dangles the threat of war from abroad in order to still dissent within his people through fear and to aggrandize his own powers as the warrior-leader.
I am not saying that the developments in Iran present no threat, nor that inaction is appropriate. But ask yourself: how would Winston Churchill, how would Franklin Delano Roosevelt or Harry S Truman have acted armed with the same facts and threat? I am calling Bush out on conscious fear-mongering to propel the nation to unwarranted and unwise tactical blunders—just the sort of thing which has marked his presidency from its inception. And I am saying that the essence of his conduct is tyrannical: it is pursued to tighten his grip on extra-Constitutional powers and authority.
On Thursday, we learned that the CIA had destroyed hundreds of hours of taped footage that showed CIA agents, and perhaps psychologists who work with them, engaging in the torture and abuse of two detainees. This is the “Program,” which President Bush first denied for years, and then claimed proud ownership in a White House press conference on September 16, 2006. A “well informed source” told CBS News the perfectly obvious: the tapes were destroyed because the officials in question fully realized that they would figure as evidence in the ultimate prosecution of the authors and agents of the torture program. CIA Director Hayden is brought out to assert that everything was perfectly legal. Then in the face of a public storm, Dana Perino goes before the cameras to mouth a line from “Hogan’s Heroes,” namely the “President knew n-o-t-h-i-n-g.” That of course is completely incredible. And now we see another gesture of the tyrannical leader who disrespects the law. When the deeds are noticed, sacrifice up some lackey to quiet the masses. That process is in full gear right now.
On Friday, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse went to the well of the Senate to deliver a speech. I very rarely quote from floor debate and speeches in the Senate. Frankly that’s because there is only very rarely anything worth quoting. But listening to and watching Senator Whitehouse, I saw the spirit of a modern-day Cicero rising to defend the life of the republic against the encroachments of a man who would be dictator. It is not just Whitehouse’s rhetoric which commands respect and attention, but also the evidence he musters.
Whitehouse used his position on the intelligence committee to gain access to the Justice Department’s new torture memoranda and to summarize their reasoning and content. And, exactly as we have long suspected, the essence of the reasoning latent in the legal infrastructure of torture is simple:
The word of the president is the law. The president defines the law. The president stands above the law and cannot be made accountable under it.
In order words, George W. Bush has asserted precisely those powers and prerogatives for which King Charles I lost his head. He has laid claim to a measure of power far beyond anything that the U.S. Constitution accords. He has even claimed more power than the British monarchs against whom the Founding Fathers fought the Revolution.
Senator Whitehouse is a former prosecutor, former U.S. Attorney, former Attorney General of Rhode Island, and former legal advisor to the state’s governor. He is a man with a long and honorable tradition of law enforcement. Here’s how he summarizes the situation:
In a nutshell, these three Bush Administration legal propositions boil down to this:
“I don’t have to follow my own rules, and I don’t have to tell you when I’m breaking them.”
“I get to determine what my own powers are.”
“The Department of Justice doesn’t tell me what the law is, I tell the Department of Justice what the law is.”
When the Congress of the United States is willing to roll over for an unprincipled President, this is where you end up. We should not even be having this discussion. But here we are. I implore my colleagues: reject these feverish legal theories. I understand political loyalty, trust me, I do. But let us also be loyal to this great institution we serve in the legislative branch of our government. Let us also be loyal to the Constitution we took an oath to defend, from enemies foreign and domestic. And let us be loyal to the American people who live each day under our Constitution’s principles and protections.
Important words. An important call. And who was listening.
And another lesson flows from this. Is it any wonder that torture lurks in the background behind all these suggestions of the paramount power and authority of the president? Torture is inevitably and inextricably bound to tyranny. It is an attribute of a tyrannical system, and it is anathema to democracy. We are living this proposition today, in these weeks.
These are the headlines of one simple week, the first week of December 2007. We watch as our republic fades and erodes. And the public continues in its consumer glee, not oblivious to the disasters unfolding about it—it recognizes that something horrible is happening—but feeling powerless to stop it.
What’s needed? First, the power of memory. To recall our own history, the sacrifices of those who went before us, and the dream of democracy and informed citizenry upon which the nation was founded. Second, the realization of danger that is present in a Government which disrespects the ideals and institutions upon which the nation was built. Third, action—demands upon those who have acquiesced in this conversion of power that they restore the constraints of the Constitution. Thomas Jefferson formulated the call perfectly:
Let him say what the government is, if it be not a tyranny, which the men of our choice have conferred on our President… In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.
Larry
You know Larry, Bush is doing what Jefferson did in the false belief that he too will be vindicated for blatantly going against and desroying the Constitution. But not this time. Bush is a tyrant and history will not look at him kindly.
I am listening to an interview of the peace prize winners and I am going to incorporate this into my story today but it reminds me of something I wrote years ago and tyhat is that all nobel prize winners must come together and speak lou and eloquently not just on the planet but on what is happening today, why, and what is going to happen if this is allowed to happen.
I hear Gore warn China and Bush but one person will not matter
We are in greater danger right now than during Jefferson's time primarily because Bush is in absolute control and wants to rule the world.
The nobel prize winners must come together and bring to the forefront around the world the dire danger to us and the planet if we continue down the road of an unsurvivable world war!
Given the Bush administration's record, the possibility of a coup d'etat by national emergency can not be ignored, especially within the context of recent institutional actions that can be reasonably interpreted as being consistent with and preparatory to such an undertaking.
See: http://www.concordbridge.net/NSPD-51.htm
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